Matt Trowbridge: NIU makes it easy for BG to ruin dream year

Northern Illinois wrote its own headline before the Mid-American Conference title game.

The Huskies donned their new charcoal gray "Black Dog" uniforms, with silver numbers and "The Hard Way" lettered across the back of their shoulders in place of player names at Ford Field in Detroit.

That's the way NIU has always approached the MAC title game. Favored NIU teams blew leads to lose in the final seconds in 2005 and 2010 and overcame slow starts to eke out last-second wins the last two years. Even in victory, the MAC title game has never been NIU's best game.

Friday, it was NIU's worst. The Huskies played a stinker in almost every way, losing 47-27 to Bowling Green and losing nearly everything in the process.

The Huskies lost a chance to play in a second consecutive BCS bowl.

Jordan Lynch, second on many analyst's list, lost a chance to go to New York for the Heisman ceremony.

The MAC lost an $8-million payday and will now probably only send four teams to a bowl instead of five.

And NIU deserved every demoralizing result.

The secondary that coach Rod Carey said had to be the strength of the defense before the year began underachieved slightly all year, but was at its absolute worst Friday. Their jerseys should have read: The Easy Way. Because they sure made it that way for the Falcons.

Bowling Green gained 136 yards on its first six plays. In the first half alone, Matt Johnson was 16-for-19 for 294 yards and four touchdowns. On two of those touchdowns, you couldn't even see a NIU defender on the TV screen. It was so easy the Falcons rolled up 381 yards at halftime despite converting only one third down.

Jordan Lynch got off to a great start, converting two third downs and floating a perfect pass under pressure to Juwan Brescacin to briefly tie the game at 7.

But for most of the rest of the night, Lynch threw high or wide or simply made the wrong decisions, often throwing into coverage or keeping the ball and running into a swarm of defenders instead of handing off to a runner going around the corner. Bowling Green has by far the best defense in the MAC, but Lynch was simply off.

Despite being severely outplayed, NIU had a chance to make it a three-point game after recovering a Bowling Green fumble at midfield. BG dropped a potential pick-6 on the next play, but Lynch threw an interception two plays later. A minute later, Johnson's fourth TD pass gave BG a 31-13 halftime lead.

Lynch also came up short when an NIU drive petered out after Bowling Green missed a chip-shot field goal in the third quarter when the Huskies were only down 11. Then, after NIU held BG to a field goal, Aaron Foster intercepted Lynch to basically end the game early in the fourth quarter.

NIU has lost only three games in two years with Jordan Lynch at quarterback, but those were his three worst games. Friday, he was 21-for-40 for 219 yards. That's a 56.1 passer rating on the NFL scale.

The defense lost this game, but a true Heisman candidate could have still won it. He didn't.

The one thing the Huskies didn't lose Friday was their future. This isn't the end of NIU (46-9 the last four years). The Huskies aren't going to the Fiesta Bowl, but they were an even better team than last season's Orange Bowl squad. That makes three years in a row where NIU improved despite having to follow one of the best seasons in school history.

But it could have been a dream season. A program-changing season. It wasn't. And the Huskies didn't even make it hard on Bowling Green to end those dreams.